Some Biscuits & Cookies

Dec 11, 2019

I was in Atlanta for the past few days for some work and a friend of mine mentioned I should try the biscuits. I thought she meant cookies. Being a sweet tooth, I was angry at myself for not knowing the special Atlanta cookie bakeshop. You see, back in Pakistan we don’t have cookies, everything is a biscuit & they’re all sweet & sugary. It’s funny how cultural nuances lead to sometimes hilarious situations. We (mostly me) get so engrossed in the tech/marketing/money bubble that we often lose sight of what makes us people.

There’s some existential angst packed up that’ll likely come up in another edition.

Also a shoutout to Sam who shamed me publicity on Twitter for not being regular with this:

Sam Grover @sambgrover

@kamilrextin did you stop doing your newsletter? Just realised I haven't gotten one in ages

John-Henry Scherck @JHTScherck

When i think of best in class B2B thought leadership, two brands that come to mind are @a16z and @Drift. Both companies have strong positions. For Andreessen it's software eating the world, for Drift, it's conversational marketing. Bot have firmly planted a stake in the ground.

I really like JHT’s twitter game. I don’t completely agree with his take (Drift is not creating a new category & Intercom is high on the list for me along with MailChimp, Wistia and a couple of others) but being a consumer of the media these companies create, I do admire what they have achieved.

Chris Handy 🌮 @chrishandyblog

People are out there building #chatbots in the image of a CONCIERGE, and wondering why it’s not changing the game. It’s because the concierge is only appropriate for the lobby, a nice to have that’s helpful once in a blue moon. On most pages, customers are looking for a VALET.

Here’s the other thing about chat bots. They' (like most tech) are not going to solve your problems. e.g if your messaging is shit, if your website is hard to navigate or folks don’t get what you do, having a chat bot won’t solve your problems. I am bitter about this because I’ve implemented Intercom/Drift at 3/4 different places & haven’t seen stellar results. None of these companies are Marketo/Salesforce and they aren’t a well-known brand with a clear top of mind awareness amongst prospects. If you have cracked that nut, I’d love to hear from you. I am going to schedule some time with Chris in 2020 (paid of course, I don’t believe it is picking people’s brains because I don’t want people picking my brain for free) to walk through what I’ve been doing. I am 99% sure it’s also a matter of patience. I’ve had drift on my site for 1 year now. I’ve only MAYBE booked/talked to 2 actual good prospects. Rest is mostly junk. When I asked them how they found me etc, I realized they’ve been to my site maybe 5/7 times before they finally felt ready to have a conversation.

Daniel Gross @danielgross

A few interesting startup ideas:

pioneer.appSmall Projects, Big CompaniesPizza delivery. Event planning. Bill splitting. We see many of these at Pioneer. I call them “incombustible ideas”. Founders relentlessly try to ignite them, but they just don’t light up. I don’t blame the firebrands. Solving anecdotal problems is a good instinct in most situations. But it can

One of the ideas is a Org Chat Marketplace? Did I ever share the story of Organimi? It’s a company I’ve been involved with (employee # 3) and now as a consultant advisor since 11/12. It’s something we’ve played around with and I think its a huge opportunity

I even ran a concierge service with Organimi for while and built Org charts for folks in Gartner and other big-name companies in my tiny apartment. Sort of the managed services model I talked about last time.

Brianne Kimmel @briannekimmel

closed beta vs. mass freemium? Before you choose to launch with a closed beta, here are some considerations: • Waitlists only work if there's scarcity and demand • Demand = product innovation & reputation • If the learning curve is low: self-serve > onboarding

Brianne is likely one of my fav from ‘VC’ twitter because she’s a strong operator. Why did this catch my eye? Everyone wants to run the SuperHuman for X model but they forget - Rahul has an SV cred from Rapportive days, incredible network & great PR. It’s like those posts about the secret to Slack’s success forget about Butterfields Flickr days & the incredible PR engine they built behind it. Not everyone can pull that off and nor is it something you can ‘framework’ out. You can build a waitlist but you have to put in the damn work to get folks excited about what your building.

Adam Singer @AdamSinger

🔥 take: (paid) influencer marketing is still a massive bubble. If your brand is paying so called 'influencers' to shill, it's because your marketing team is bad at their jobs and doesn't know how to do acquisition at scale properly (or build their trust in social organically).

I don’t think influencer marketing is all snake oil - but there sure is alot of sketchy as fuck shit happening there & its something I know little about. From what I know - it can be quite the shitshow.

Lots of thoughts on the Away fiasco but I’ll leave two links here. Maybe it is Occams Razor.

🎵 George Michael & 80s pop.

Till next time.

Kamil